Broken Clocks
by Satellites on Parade
Summary: By some bizarre fluke, Ariadne finds herself hired by Fischer Enterprises to design Robert Fischer's new house. Eventual Ariadne/Fischer, some Ariadne/Arthur.
1. Signed Letters

**Posted to LJ but I figured I'd post it here, too. I loved this movie and I love these two as a couple for some bizarre reason. Do not hurt me please. At least this way Eames get Arthur all to himself.**

**I don't own **_**Inception, **_**thankfully; I'd probably ruin it if I did.**

–

Robert Fischer doesn't remember the last time he dreamed.

It's not as though he has time to, really. Each day is a passing flurry of paperwork to fill out, phone calls to make, stockholders to reassure, distracting secretaries to avoid, people to please, worries to hear, and more questions to answer than ask. Dreaming is out of the question – such fanciful activities are hardly appropriate for a man of his caliber, and he has this odd feeling whenever he goes to sleep that he has no need to dream, that he's already dreamed the dream to end them all, and he can't remember a moment of it.

He is sitting at his desk now, his back sore against the uncomfortably stiff back of his new leather swivel chair, and he absentmindedly spins it, watching as the paintings on the wall pass by in pastel blurs, and then he stops, because it's giving him a headache. He pinches his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and he realizes how tired he is, and how much he wants to retreat into the outrageous confines of a dream, but then his cell phone rings and he forgets this feeling, answering it with a simple greeting of "Fischer."

(It feels wrong to use it. That name was his father's.)

–

Ariadne has a cat.

The cat's name is Protogeneia and she is very rude to everyone except Ariadne, and Ariadne loves her dearly because when she isn't sleeping on important designs or yowling cantankerously for food she is a very dear animal, and she is Ariadne's only companion at home. Ariadne sometimes hates that she lives alone with her cat – it's embarrassing – but generally, she doesn't mind it too much, unless Eames drops by and makes some crack about it.

Ariadne has her own business. She graduated college with a degree in Architecture two months after the Fischer Job (that's what they call it – she doesn't like it). She has since managed to open and run a rather high-end architecture business in which she designs posh homes for equally posh clients, and sometimes she'll whip up the occasional building, but there's nothing quite like mazes for her and there never will be again. She always forces herself not to start plotting one up during her lunch break, and she has to refrain from glancing at the weekly ones in the paper and wondering how they'd fare as a dream level. She doesn't particularly like what she's become, and sometimes she lies awake and wonders how things would be different if she'd simply not flipped that pad over and drawn a baffling circle on it, or if she'd kept herself from going back to the warehouse that afternoon. She could have survived perfectly well without all of that business. She hadn't really wanted to go back anyway... had she?

At this point Protogeneia would always appear and ask for food and Ariadne's thoughts would dissolve.

She still gets visits from the majority of the dream members, except for Yusuf, who went back to Mombasa. Eames jokingly calls them The Dream Team. She laughs every time he says it.

Most of the visits are occasional, but she supposes it depends on who's doing the visiting; Eames pops in a couple of times a month, Arthur shows up once a week with a bottle of wine because he is philosophically opposed to not being a gentleman, and to appearing at anyone's residence without some sort of gift; Cobb has only come a few times, but Ariadne doesn't mind; and Saito... well, Saito appeared only once, when she'd had a particularly nasty boyfriend who'd wound up hitting her, and he offered many an appealing action, actions without consequence, but Ariadne, though touched – and a bit perturbed – by his concern, had politely declined him and phoned the police on the lout who'd given her a black eye. (Arthur had seen it and panicked.)

Ariadne hears the mail truck spluttering up and then driving away, and she strides outside past the symmetrical arrangements of foxgloves and irises and lilies and pulls a wad of letters from the ground beneath her mail slot (her front gate is very high and painted blue).

When she's back inside she flicks disinterestedly through them, tossing the clothing catalogues onto the couch and the bills onto the table and the letter from Fischer Enterprises onto the—

Wait.

Ariadne's breath catches like a needle in her throat as she does a double-take on the return address on the envelope. Her eyes must be deceiving her. There is no other explanation.

Protogeneia creeps in from out of nowhere, arching her back affectionately against Ariadne's calf, rubbing her head against her ankle, and sneezing. She sits back and stares curiously at Ariadne, her large golden eyes protuberant, her pupils large.

With shaking fingers, Ariadne flips the envelope over and pulls it open tenderly, careful not to rip the folds of it (she does this with every envelope). Her eyes skim it and she vaguely comprehends something about her being hired to design Robert Fischer's new house, how they've taken interest in her talent and are offering her some stupid amount of money with a great deal of zeros, but this is all inconsequential compared to the elegant scrawl at the end of the letter, written out in deep blue ink, and beneath it, in a small, meek font, the unneeded translation: _Robert Fischer, CEO_. She knows he probably didn't write it himself, because what sort of man talks about himself in the third person, but she still can't help but be put off by the name, by that infuriatingly innocent name; in a bit of a panic, she drops the letter and runs to the telephone, nearly tripping over Protogeneia, and dialing the first number that comes to mind.

"Arthur," she croaks breathlessly. "Can you come over here right now, please?"

(She's damn lucky he's staying in Paris this week, he says.)

–

Robert Fischer very rarely yells at anyone, but he yelled at his latest secretary this morning when she told him he had no sense of humour.

Robert Fischer has a perfectly good sense of humour, thank you very much.

At the moment he's sitting in his chair again, taking advantage of the fact that there's no one else in the room and spinning around in it some more, this time enjoying it a lot more than he probably should have. He's still spinning in it when he hears a knock on his office door. Startled, he nearly falls out of his seat, but he manages to avoid such an unfortunate occurrence, straightening himself and his tie and his shirt and his lapel and folding his hands on his desk before replying, "come in."

He doesn't know who the devil it is, but he never does anyway.

The door swings gently open, pushed by small, soft hands. In the threshold stands an impossibly petite young woman with her thick brown hair braided into a bun, clad in a rather trim gray blouse and a bright red cardigan and well fitted jeans and iboots/i, of all things, and she looks up at him and suddenly he can hardly speak, because he's certain he's seen her before, somewhere unattainable and hazy and brimming with snowfall and impossibly high balconies and endless seas.

"Hello," she voices politely, her fingers still resting unsurely on the doorknob. "Um, I was told I may or may not have been hired by a Mr. Robert Fischer to design a house...?"

"Oh," Fischer manages to eke out. "Oh, yes, um. Of course." He has no idea what she's talking about. "Yes, yes, right; come in, please."

She smiles, looking relieved, and closes the door silently behind her, her eyes roving over the paintings on his walls and the volumes of books on his mahogany shelves. She says something about how he has good taste, but he's too busy concentrating on the unnerving familiarity of the way she walks.

"Um." He shakes his head, attempting to clear it but only making it more befuddling. "I'm sorry; what was your name?"

"Ariadne," she replies evenly. There's no need to tell anyone her surname, not with a first name like hers. It's not something people easily forget.

"Ariadne," he repeats, testing it out, and he feels the tiniest shiver creep up his spine.

She gestures to the chair in front of his desk. "May I?"

"Oh." He nods. "Yes, of course. Please." He realizes he's been saying the same few monosyllabic words since she walked in and feels awkward. Typically he's a bit more eloquent than this.

There's a brief, questioning silence, and Ariadne fidgets. She speaks first.

"I received a letter yesterday from you—"

"Uh, chances are I didn't... write it," he interrupts inadvertently. There are usually so many things on his desk for him to sign that he doesn't even know what he's sending off. "My secretary; she..."

"Yeah, I figured," Ariadne replies, nodding understandingly, smirking just very slightly. "I wouldn't expect someone like Robert Fischer to write his own letters anyway."

He finds her sarcasm to be quite charming, unfortunately.

She clears her throat. "Anyway – as I was saying, a letter came in the mail stating that I'd been, um, apparently hired to design a... a house for you."

He frowns. "I'm sorry?"

"A house," she repeats slowly, her eyebrows raised ever so slightly. "I... I work independently, you see; I'm hired by various clients who deem my work to be worth their trouble and then I create... er, well, I come up with blueprints for whatever they're asking me to build." She pauses. "I'm – well, I like to think I'm the best in my field."

"Modest, I see," Fischer says, quirking a smile with a wry eyebrow above it. "Well... to be honest, I wasn't even aware that I _needed_ a new house, but I suppose if you're here and somebody thought it'd be a good idea, then... you're hired."

"Oh, well, I'm glad you offered before you decided." Ariadne leans forward in her chair. "So... what sort of place are you looking at, anyway?"

"Um," Fischer begins, but his cell phone suddenly rings obnoxiously, one of those default tones that's supposed to sound like a real telephone but just sounds like a bunch of tuning forks being shaken around in a knapsack, and he glances at her apologetically before picking it up.

"Fischer," he says, his voice clipped. "Yes, right; um... give me a moment, would you?" He tilts his face away from the phone toward the girl opposite him and presses the receiver against his neck. "I'm... this is an important call; I can't really..."

"No, of course," Ariadne nods again, but she doesn't look quite as understanding as she did before. She stands up to go and Fischer's throat clenches and—

"Wait, no," he exclaims without forethought. "Let's discuss it over lunch, all right? One o'clock? There's a restaurant just down the street—"

"Um..." She looks hesitant and shifts nervously, her eyes flicking to various things but never directly to him; after a moment's consideration she replies, "all right."

Relieved, Fischer smiles in appreciation before returning to his phone call, and his eyes do not stray from her form until she closes the door behind her.

(It's Peter Browning on the phone and he's as pompous as ever.)


	2. Onions

**Hooray, time for some Arthur-Ariadne interaction! Guhh, please don't hurt me if the French is bad; my four years of study are useless at 2 AM.**

**I don't own **_**Inception, **_**thankfully; I'd probably ruin it if I did.**

–

Arthur specifically told her not to go to Fischer's office in the first place, but Ariadne, just like everyone else, ignored his advice.

Now she's sitting by herself at a well-worn wooden table, in a well-worn black metal chair, only just now wondering why on earth Fischer Enterprises has set itself up in Paris, of all places, compulsively drinking the glass of water that's being constantly refilled by the enthusiastic waiter.

She glances at her watch and it's one-twenty and she can't help but feel a little put out; then she stops looking at her watch because she realizes that if people saw a young lady sitting alone at a table looking at her watch they'd get the entirely wrong impression.

She sighs and takes another swig of water, shivering as she feels it trickle down her throat, vaguely pondering what would happen if it took a wrong turn and filled her lungs. She grimaces and pushes the glass away.

Suddenly her eyes fall on a dark blue suit before her, standing awkwardly next to the chair, and as her eyes progress upwards she discovers that the dark blue suit has an owner, and that owner is Robert Fischer.

"I must say, your punctuality is pretty impressive," she remarks dryly, but in good enough humour. Fischer smiles a little helplessly and slides into the other chair, setting his briefcase down beside him and his cell phone on the table next to his napkin.

"You shouldn't do that, you know," Ariadne admonishes him, and he frowns, confused; she points to his briefcase on the ground. "Someone could just walk by and take it; happens all the time."

He blinks, a bit surprised, and reaches down to pick it up again. Ariadne has to try not to giggle.

"Just set it between your feet or something," she says. Fischer does so, still looking a bit befuddled.

Ariadne can't help it – she laughs. "I'm sorry; I was just trying to be helpful."

"Oh, no, you were." He doesn't sound sure of that bit. "Thank you."

After a pregnant pause in which he glances at her water longingly and she fingers her napkin a few times, the enthusiastic waiter appears, grinning in excitement, and Ariadne tries to fend off a dull pain in her forehead.

"_Bonjour, mademoiselle et monsieur; qu'est-ce que vous voudriez aujourd'hui?_"

Fischer opens his mouth and starts to say, "_anglais, s'il vous-plait_," but Ariadne beats him to it.

"_Je voudrais la soupe a l'oignon comme d'habitude_," she answers with a smile. She glances questioningly at Fischer, who quickly peruses the menu before saying to her, "um... same?"

"_Et lui aussi_," she tells the waiter. He nods happily and whisks the menus away, bustling back indoors.

Fischer confesses himself to be quite impressed. He raises his eyebrows pointedly at Ariadne, who chuckles a little, and he chuckles back for a brief moment.

"You speak French?" he asks – it's really a rhetorical question.

"Well, I kind of have to, living in France and all," she retorts. "Don't you?"

"Speak it? Oh, um, no. Not very well."

"Better start learning, then." She sips some more of her water without even realizing it. Her hands are shaking, infinitesimally, in preparation for a question she's dreading above all else: _do I know you?_

"So," Fischer says. It was a bit of an invitation for her to open the conversation they'd come here to have, but instead he just sounds like a bit of an idiot. He clears his throat.

"Oh, right. House." Ariadne sighs gratefully. "So... I'm guessing that, seeing as you're Robert Fischer and all, you're looking for something a bit flamboyant."

Fischer lets out a laugh at that, the first real one he's had in a while. "That's a good assumption, but an entirely untrue one."

She raises her eyebrows. "Really?"

"Yes." His eyes trace subtly over her face like a paintbrush – where has he seen it before? "I'm... oh, I don't know; I'm just looking for a place I can _live _in, honestly."

"Well, we can start with the house you live in now and think about what you do want and don't want based on that outline. After that we can get into the finer details. It's better to start with something familiar; it's better to build from memory..."

Her voice trails off abruptly on the last bit and she gets a distant look in her hazel eyes, but it only lasts for a second because the waiter suddenly pops up, babbling in French so fast that not even Ariadne can understand him, and he plops the bowls of French onion soup in front of each of them, claps his hands together in glee and then goes on his merry way.

Fischer looks at it a bit apprehensively. He hates onions and that's what it sounded like she was saying, except prettier because it was in French.

"It's delicious," she says, as though reading his mind. "Trust me. Try it."

Fischer isn't completely sure if he trusts her at all, because she's been unnerving him just by existing ever since she knocked on his office door, but he's hungry and he ordered this anyway and he doesn't want that zealous waiter to turn nasty, so he pulls a face and picks up his spoon and tastes it.

Ariadne grins expectantly at him, already having managed to wolf down half of her bowl. She eats quite ravenously for such a small girl; Fischer is astonished.

It's not that bad, honestly. He wishes it were, so that he wouldn't have to concede that she was right, but Robert Fischer finds it impossible to say that good food tastes bad.

"It's pretty good," he admits, and Ariadne beams triumphantly, emptying and refilling her spoon so quickly it's almost a blur.

"You have no taste," she states with conviction. "It's _delicious_."

"You know," Fischer clears his throat, "I keep forgetting that we didn't just come here to have lunch. Is that bad?"

"No," Ariadne says. "I do, too."

(Fischer hides his smile.)

–

When Ariadne gets back to her house it's three-thirty and the wind is picking up and Arthur is standing at her front door with his hands in his pockets. Ariadne is startled by his presence and lets out a bit of an embarrassing shriek, which he smirks enjoyably at, and her cheeks flush angrily.

"Don't _do _that to me, Arthur!" she hisses, groping for her keys in the pocket of her sweater. "God, do you take pride in sneaking up on people?"

"I like to think of it as one of my specialties," he remarks wryly, smirking almost flawlessly. Ariadne rolls her eyes.

"By the way," Arthur adds, "I was hoping you'd invite me in."

"I'd hate to disappoint you," Ariadne replies halfheartedly as she opens the door for him. He stares at her curiously. "Ladies first," she says. Arthur's ears flush red as he replies, "precisely."

They stand at odds in the doorway for a few minutes before Ariadne gives a huff and concedes to enter first, and Arthur, satisfied, follows her crisply in.

Ariadne's walls are painted pastel yellow like Easter chicks and most of her furniture is white, which contrasts magnificently with the furry ebony stretch of Protogeneia across the majority of it. Arthur is allergic to cats, so naturally, he lets out a ripping sneeze.

"Bless you," Ariadne says automatically. Arthur nods appreciatively.

"Tea?" Ariadne offers as she ventures into the kitchen.

"Earl Grey, please," Arthur starts to say, but before he can even get out a syllable she smiles and says, "no, don't worry; I know."

After filling the space between the silence and the whistling kettle with idle chatter and taking a few sips out of Ariadne's hand-painted teacups (the work of her grandmother), Arthur decides it is the best time to bring forth the reason for his visit.

"You went to Fischer's for the interview today," he remarks. It's not a question, it's a fact, like something out of a textbook. Ariadne can tell by the tone of his voice that she would be wise not to deny it.

"Yes, I did." She sticks her chin out defiantly. "And?"

Arthur sighs and shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers, brow furrowing as though he's come down with a nasty headache, before setting the cup and saucer on the table and folding his hands in as professional a manner as possible.

"Ariadne," he says softly, sternly. "We talked about this. Cobb debriefed us all two days after the job was finished and he went over protocol like nobody's business. I should think you'd remember the majority of it."

"I do," Ariadne argues, and that's the truth. "I was listening. It's just..." Her mind brings forth a plethora of viable excuses, excuses that speak of need for employment or desire to try something different or some such nonsense, but she knows she can't bring herself say any of them.

"We had lunch," she admits off the bat, hoping to get the worst of Arthur's tirade over with. Arthur's face jerks into a visage of extreme disappointment, and Ariadne winces just a little bit. "It, uh... it was... good."

"Ariadne, in all honesty, I have never expected that you would eventually do something this utterly foolish." Arthur's tone is clipped, like usual, and he snatches a small pastry off the plate Ariadne has set out.

Ariadne huffs. "For Christ's sake, Arthur, will you lighten up? He doesn't _remember _me—"

"Oh, no?" Arthur sounds very amused all of a sudden. "That's what you think, Ariadne. People can remember dreams, particularly vivid ones, ones worth remembering. What we gave him was probably the most memorable dream of his life, and he's not liable to go forgetting it anytime soon."

"Oh, please," Ariadne retorts. "If he remembered me, he would have said something. You know, '_oh, I say, do I know you?_'"

"Not necessarily," Arthur points out (he is, after all, the point man). "Whenever you see some complete stranger you think you've met before, do you walk up to them and ask? Dreams typically just leave us with a profound sense of déjà vu."

"Not _us_," Ariadne corrects him, almost bitterly. Arthur's mouth stiffens into a thin line momentarily, displeased at being interrupted.

Protogeneia lets out a tortured yowl and Ariadne glances over at her. She's stretching, slowly climbing up into Arthur's lap, much to his obvious dismay.

"Why does your cat like me so much?" he grumbles, making no effort to push Protogeneia off.

Ariadne laughs. "Why wouldn't she?"

Arthur's smile at that is well-concealed.

"Really, though." He clears his throat, attempting to remain as business-like as possible, even though he somehow wound up sitting in the white wicker rocking chair with the pale pink shawl draped over the back of it and a cat in his lap. "You shouldn't get yourself into this, Ariadne. You can't know how it'll turn out."

Ariadne very rarely hears Arthur call her by her first name, so it's a bit of a treat, even though he's scolding her.

"I know what I'm doing, Arthur," she says evenly, hoping that, for once, he'll believe her.

"That's exactly what Cobb said before he nearly got us all stuck in limbo," Arthur retorts dryly. Ariadne huffs in irritation.

"This is reality, Arthur," Ariadne protests. "What, just because we were separated from it once means we can never live in it again? You're objective – hell, _I'm_ objective. Psychologically – scientifically – _logically_ – would he _honestly_ remember who I was?"

Arthur stares at her long and hard, his impenetrable brown eyes calculating, before responding.

"There is a chance that he will," he says. "And as long as there's that, I'm afraid I can't support you on this. But I'm not going to try to stop you. If you want to wind up being thrown in jail, that's fine by me."

"Jail?" Ariadne scoffs, taking a swig of tea. "How would they prove it? Reading Fischer's dream journal? Come on. They were dreams. There's no lasting evidence of them. They're just fragments. Eventually they'll ebb away just like everything else."

Arthur stares into the bottom of his teacup as he mutters, to himself and no one else, "it's never going to be that simple."

"Hmm?" Ariadne perks up.

"Dimples," Arthur recovers smoothly. "You have dimples."


	3. Wisteria

**Woo-hoo! Finally, another chapter! What, did you guys think I'd abandoned you? NAWW. I love this story too much. I'm just a perfectionist with it. I refuse to post it unless it sounds poetic and pretentious.**

**Good luck spotting the **_**Lovely Bones**_** reference. (There's my question! Would it be "the **_**The Lovely Bones**_**" or "the **_**Lovely Bones**_**?" GRAMMAR STINKS.)**

**I don't own anyone, which they consider to be a massive blessing in their happy-go-lucky fictional lives.**

–

When the winter nights turn black, Ariadne dreams upside-down.

She dreams of cascades of falling feathers and crumbling shorelines, and softly spoken words echo through the unblemished blue pits of her skies, and paper airplanes drift in her wake like dissolving parts of herself.

She dreams, when gravity tugs the snow past her windowpanes, of Fischer.

She lies awake and stares at the ceiling in the dark, tracing pathways and cities on it, wondering what end this maze will come to, wondering if the ground will fall from under her feet when she reaches the center and finds him standing in it.

He rarely speaks, but when he does, he asks her why. He asks her if it's true that his father never loved him. He asks her why she ever told him otherwise.

She can never answer, and the feathers and shorelines turn to whirlwinds of white sand, and she wakes up, and for a second there is a hook in her heart and it pulls her out of her swiftly blurring reveries. Protogeneia is there and she comes and lies beside her, her warmth a beacon, her rumbling purrs like the hum of the sea.

Ariadne goes back to sleep and dreams of nothing. Morning comes and she opens her eyes knowing that she will again be making the journey to the wide, empty house that is half-built; she will again wait on her tiptoes for those cups of cobalt to shatter over her face; she will close her eyes and breathe them in and try to remember that she is not dreaming.

When the winter mornings turn white, Ariadne wakes to the sound of turtle doves.

–

The snow clings to the rotating wheels of her bicycle as she rides up the path to the construction site. The white sun glistens dully on the naked skeletons of the doorways, reminding Ariadne of knife edges. She rests her bicycle against a pile of planks and pulls her sketchpad from her bag, feeling a quick slap of cold pinch her face; the wind blows the pages open and amongst the geometrical shapes and blocks of tiny handwriting there are black sketches of high cheekbones and blue apathy.

She hears footsteps behind her and turns, the wind still pulling at her loose brown bun and her thick red peacoat and her navy wool scarf; Robert Fischer, Jr. is standing there with his hands in his pockets, calculations flashing across his eyes, his fragile back arching against the curves of the cold.

"You're here early," he remarks. Part of his gray scarf covers his mouth and chin. Flecks of snow melt in his hair.

"I could say the same to you, Mr. Fischer," she retorts simply, snapping her sketchbook closed as though it had never been open. She tosses her head to throw her growing bangs out of her eyes and squints thoughtfully at him. She is a walking gooseflesh girl and he is a statue carved in sea cliffs.

Their breaths steam out in clouds and intertwine.

That is all they say to each other before the workers come straggling in, yawning and shouting. She hesitates before she walks away, wanting to ask him what he dreams about and why, but the indigo bruises of his musings are lost on her, fading in and out like songs with only middles.

They start in on the walls that day. Ariadne stands in the snow with her strands of hair gathered around her chin and directs the workers with crispness and concentration. Fischer watches her and wonders what he's doing there, wonders where he's seen those sharp hazel eyes before. Her fingers protrude from her thick goldenrod gloves and they are milkier than the snow; he wants to study her irises under a microscope and find answers between the flecks of amber and redwood.

About halfway through the day, when his eyes stare at the snow but see thoughts beyond it, he is suddenly aware of her standing next to him, extending a cup of something steamy his way. As is often the case whenever she comes within his proximity, he is a bit perturbed by her presence, and it takes him a moment to reach out and accept her offer. He blinks down at it. It's hot chocolate.

"Where did you even get this?" he mumbles.

Ariadne gives a knowing smile and sips.

–

Spring gives way to windows, wide windows and round windows and one big stained glass window right over the front door that depicts a mourning dove nesting in the soft confines of a white rose.

Ariadne wears jeans in the spring, jeans so pale Fischer swears she probably bleaches them. With the jeans are big gray v-necks over black turtlenecks with sleeves that go to the elbows and round tortoiseshell sunglasses. She has cut all of her hair off and it wriggles and twists next to her earlobes. She strolls around the perimeter of the almost-finished house and Fischer hopes each time that she will find the perfection she seeks. Instead she always stops – stands up straight – puts her chin in one hand – shakes her head and waves one dismissive hand at the sight of it and strides resolutely away for another night of erasing and sketching and erasing again.

When his attention is turned to the flocks of birds sweeping back into the sunshine, Ariadne gazes at him with perplexed wonder, asking herself why she ever lied to a young man like this, a young man whose fragility sticks its bones out through suit pockets and begs for company. She goes home at night and stares at blank walls and wishes she could go back and reverse it all, because he is living in the illusion that he had a father who cared about him, and she has caused that illusion. There is no permanence to it. It dissolves more gradually each day; she can see it in the way he flickers off whenever his father's name is mentioned. It is in the vanishment that her cruelty lies.

Some days she wants to rush over and embrace him and apologize until it hurts.

She is proud of the house that she has designed for him, compensating for her guilt with grandeur, calling it her _modus operandi_, he calling it his "humble abode." Occasionally, she thinks they both might be calling it the right thing.

In her petite, tight jeans and small scarlet vests and high-waisted antique belts, she wonders if she looks like a sleeping schoolgirl who spends her afternoons playing hopscotch rather than creating the bones of mansions. Fischer thinks she looks like a painting. That is how little she seems to be real to him some days.

–

The walls have been built in the house and Ariadne knows that when the doorknobs are in place will be the day she tells him the truth. She has decided that she will no longer conceal the raw pulp of this lie, and when she tells Arthur of her plan, she expects him to approve. He doesn't. Not at all.

"Are you insane?" he snaps, dropping his teacup harshly back into its saucer and setting it on the edge of her coffee table.

"What the hell kind of stupid question is that?" she retorts fiercely, her protuberant brown eyes boring into him. He scoffs at her and shakes his head, looking away, clenching his jaw in disapproval.

"I distinctly remember _telling_ you," he growls, "_not_ to take the job. And after you took the job, I told you to quit. And after you didn't quit, I told you to at least avoid interacting with him as much as possible. And now look at what you've decided to do! Jesus."

"Arthur," she whispers imploringly. "He needs to know."

Arthur lets out a barking sound, something like an auditory brick being flung from his throat, and she flinches at it. It's supposed to be laughter, but she can't imagine laughter sounding like that.

"Ariadne," he replies, looking up at her with a smile more blatantly forced than a peace treaty, "I can't allow you to tell him about what we did. I mean, can you imagine the… the scandal it would cause? Can you imagine how much it would cost him to hire an entire team of hitmen to take us all out? I don't want him to go to all that trouble, and you can sure as hell bet _Cobb_ doesn't, either."

"Oh, to hell with Cobb!" Ariadne spits, throwing her arms in the air in exasperation. "He could be climbing the Matterhorn and we wouldn't even know it!"

"True," Arthur grunts at a low enough volume to escape Ariadne's ears. "Look, I'd love getting caught doing something extremely illegal as much as the next guy, but—"

"Arthur." She says his name with all the firmness she can muster, and it captures him for a moment – he pauses and looks straight at her. "Trust me."

He lets out an exhale and a begrudging smile. "That's not the first time you've asked me that."

"And it won't be the last."

He nods slowly, ponderously, probably just out of habit. After a few moments, which Ariadne allows him, he reaches down and takes his teacup again, downing the last of its contents. His eyes have not strayed from their path to the wisteria bush outside the window.

"How is he, by the way?" he asks after several minutes of silence, and Ariadne stares at him, dumbfounded.

"Uh… what?"

"Fischer. How is he?"

"Oh, um." She pauses, still trying to digest the idea of him caring. "He's fine. I mean, he doesn't talk much, but he never really did. And, uh… I dunno. He's never completely paying attention. He's usually somewhere else, you know?"

"Somewhere else," Arthur murmurs thoughtfully, interlacing his fingers and resting his chin on them. "Some in-between…"

"Sorry?" Ariadne frowns. She's read that in a book once, but she can't recall which.

Arthur clears his throat and averts her eyes, as he often does when he is preparing to explain something. She likes the line that forms between his eyebrows when he's concentrating. He looks like something out of the Louvre.

"Well, sometimes dreamers, after awakening from a particularly complex dream, find themselves questioning their reality in conjunction with the dream they have been a part of. They're not entirely sure which is which. It only lasts for a while usually—"

"But," Ariadne's voice cracks; Arthur looks up at her tightly. "But not for—"

"We will not discuss her," Arthur cuts her off sharply, and Ariadne remembers a word she learned on the first day of her high school French class to describe a rainy day: _mal_. "You know what Cobb said."

Ariadne scoffs. "Again with Cobb! Arthur, he's not even _here_. It's not like he's creeping around in the rosemary bush outside listening to see if you do anything he doesn't want you to. Come on! Who even _knows_ where he is?"

"Regardless!" Arthur speaks more sharply than she's ever heard him, and she jumps a little, feeling stupid. "That is not the matter I came here to talk about. I came here to talk about Robert Fischer, Jr., and how brilliantly you're backing yourself into a corner we won't be able to help you out of."

"I am fine on my own," Ariadne snaps, sticking out her chin defiantly, her hazel eyes flashing. "Just because I'm the only girl doesn't mean you guys need to rally around me. I'm not your younger sister! I know what I'm doing, and it's fine."

"Of course you do," Arthur hisses to the floor. "You always do; I mean, why on earth wouldn't you? Women are, after all, all-knowing! Well!" He ends his brief monologue and stabs his eyes into hers. "We'll just see how much you _know_ what you're doing. When he hires a couple of extractors to stick a PASIV in your arm and pilfer everything you hold dear, you just _see_ if Cobb and Eames and Yusuf and Saito and I are there you help you."

"Saito didn't even do anything except get shot!"

"Ariadne!" Arthur has never shouted at her until now; now, as he slams his teacup so harshly onto the table that the liquid bursts up and spills. "This conversation is over! I am going home."

He rises and strides over to the coat hanger to take off his fedora and picks his briefcase up off the floor. Ariadne is fuming so vehemently that she doesn't even have the desire to stop him. He is about to put his hand on the doorknob when his head inches to the left, in her direction, infinitesimally.

"But if you tell him the truth," he says, his voice low, "I will be forced to…"

"What?" she demands after his voice fades, her words catching harshly in the back of her throat. "You'll be forced to _what_?"

But he has already turned away again, has already thrown open the door and stormed out into the snow. Ariadne catches the glint of one of his cufflinks and it almost blinds her. When he doesn't have the proper manners to close the door and she hears him crunching away, she leaps up and stomps to fix his error.

"You're not invited for tea next week!" she shrieks to his retreating form, and she slams the door with so much fury it makes the house rattle. Protogeneia's tail puffs out and she skids across the hardwood floor until she is safely out of sight.

Ariadne tilts forward and rests her head on the door, feeling the corners of the carvings pressing into her forehead. Her hand is still on the doorknob.

"I never thought dreaming would be the easiest thing," she whispers to no one.

–

**Arthur is a jerk. Go back to the house, Ariadne, and have sexytimes! IT'S NOT LIKE THAT'D BE JUMPING THE SHARK OR ANYTHING.**

**I have decided that this story will run for approximately six to ten chapters. The end could be nigh! Or maybe not so much.**


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